Center celebrates Latino arts and culture

If it takes a village to raise a child, Villa Victoria Center for the Arts is nurturing entire communities.

Chris Bergeron

If it takes a village to raise a child, Villa Victoria Center for the Arts is nurturing entire communities.

Located in the heart of a six-block enclave in the South End named Villa Victoria, or "Victory Village," it brings Latino dance, music, theater and visual arts to audiences of all ages, races and ethnicities.

Director Javier Torres said the mission of Villa Victoria Center for the Arts is to "preserve, promote and celebrate Latino arts and artists in ways that create dynamic cross-cultural collaborations."

Operating from a renovated 19th-century Lutheran church, it includes an art gallery, a theater which can hold 445 people, a dance hall and visual arts studio.

"We're creating a place to show high-quality Latino artists," said Torres, a former Holliston resident who attended Framingham State College. "We're changing the definition of what Latino art is and who Latinos are."

Torres prefers not to use the word "Hispanic" which he said was coined by the U.S. government and focuses on language rather than culture.

For him, "Latino" is a "more inclusive" term to describe "a shared cultural experience" that connects Puerto Ricans, Central and South Americans, various Caribbean people and others including some Europeans with a common heritage.

While many events are presented in Spanish, English or both, Torres said several Brazilian-themed activities such as music or martial arts are scheduled each year. "We're predominantly Latino but our doors are open to everybody," he said.

The center provides a wide range of events including a Latin Music Series, New England's oldest running Latino cultural festival and a changing series of exhibits in La Galeria, its spacious first-floor art gallery.

More than 100 students participate in an after-school arts program. Students can study Latino drumming techniques in collaboration with the South End Youth Music Consortium, attend workshops on Hip Hop to improve critical thinking or study martial arts "designed for Boston's streets."

Through Sept. 2, the art center is exhibiting 15 paintings, sculptures and mixed media pieces by Puerto Rican artist Nilda Rosario in a show titled "Travesias," or "Journies."

For her first solo show in the U.S., she is exhibiting several masks, including one beneath a wire cage, thick knotted ropes and painted diptichs that suggest unrelieved tension.

Evan Garza, gallery director and curator, said Rosario has created challenging art "from her own subjective experience as an artist, a female and a Puerto Rican."

Noting all Rosario's pieces have names beginning with the letter "i" like "Intimacy," "Imposition" and "Immolation," he suggested they might signify her own struggle for personal and artistic identity.

Since arriving in May, Garza hopes in future exhibits to "push the boundaries" of Latino art further with "everything from videos to installations and sculptures."

"We want to get people to think what Latino art is about. We're going to improve by staying current," he said.

In many ways, Villa Victoria Center for the Arts came to fruition through the decades-long efforts of Puerto Rican community activists who fought in the 1960s to control the growth of their neighborhood.

VVAC is a program of Inquilinos Boricuas en Accion (IBA), a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering the Villa Victoria community through "education, economic development, technology and arts programming," said Torres.

Once known only as Parcel 19, the Villa Victoria community presently has about 3,000 residents of which 72 percent are Puerto Ricans and Latinos. Most of the other residents came from China, Africa or are African-Americans.

From his office at 85 West Newton St., Torres said he's "dedicated to creating a regional and then a national network" for Latino artists.

He has no doubt Villa Victoria for the Arts has deservedly earned its reputation as the premier source for Latino arts in Boston.

"Absolutely. Without a doubt. Unequivocably," he said. " Our goal is to be that for all of New England."

MetroWest Daily News

THE ESSENTIALS:

Villa Victoria Center for the Arts in at 85 West Newton St., Boston.

Admission is free and gallery hours are 4 to 7 p.m. Thursday and Friday and 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday.

"Travesias," or "Journeys," by Nilda Rosario is on view through Sept. 2.

Call 617-927-1735 or go to www.villavictoriaarts.org for more information.